Amitabh Nangia, Tricolite Electrical Industries

What business challenges you are currently facing? How IT is helping you in overcoming these challenges?

With growing businesses and operations, governance is the biggest hurdle that we face in the current scenario. Tricolite has risen from a small-scale man dependent organization to a medium scale process driven company. This shift is still on, more so in professionalizing our systems and making them more efficient. It has taken us time to adept our ways of governance, auditing and ability to take proactive action.

These things are still a challenge and I don’t think one can ever achieve them completely coz as one grows in size and complexity the need for better governance increases.

IT has played a major role in assisting us in identifying the appropriate methods of corporate governance. ERP has been able to provide us with a common platform for all data management that is dynamic and further feeds functions in other departments.

Our business was also impacted by the global meltdown last year, and is now on its way back to stability and recovery. The changed global scenario has left behind a business model of changed variables in the market. These new variables are our current challenges.

IT systems have allowed us in collection, logical assimilation and retrieval of data as and when required. It has allowed us to implement our strategies of cost reductions, change management and control over the past years; becoming a great tool of support in this regard.

What is the importance of IT in your business?

As a business we have always invested our time, effort and resources on keeping ourselves abreast, or more so ahead in our field of operation. We have continuously trained our teams in the latest IT tools and systems (currently employing ERP- Microsoft Dynamics Nav), and modeled our business processes around it.

Inventories and Debtors are mapped and managed much more efficiently on ERP than they were manually. Proper aging reports can be produced for both which enable us to better administer these financial heads and thus improve our bottom line.

Process audits are executed regularly which ensures that no important process is bypasses and the system is well respected. Checks are done to ensure there is correct data entry and proactive action can be taken in cases where there is a mistake, especially before it affects the functioning of other departments.

Time is much more efficiently managed as a lot of data can be retrieved by a click of a button in any format that we desire. Compliance to Statutory requirements and management of all legal forms has become much more hassle free than managing the hard copy of forms and registers.

With these benefits and much more IT assumes a very important role in overall functioning. It is impossible to now go back to the days of managing one’s business like the olden days.

How much do you rely on web to promote your business?

As we manufacture a custom built product, which is most used in industrial settings, online advertising is not a suitable marketing channel for us. Our business requires high levels of client interaction, and thus the web for us has its limitations However, We employ the company website (www.tricolite.com) only as an interface for information sharing and product showcase. We do keep updating our website as that is the window into our ways of working, ethics and achievements

We do communicate excessively through mail with our customers and vendors to keep them in tune with our activities and as a mode of communication.

What you are planning to deploy in IT in future? (If you are not planning then anything you recently deployed) when was the time what was that? How much was the investment involved and what were the benefits?

Recently we have upgraded our ERP system from Microsoft Business Solutions Navision 4.0 to Microsoft Dynamics Nav5.0. We have implemented the Manufacturing Module in the ERP. We have shifted our database from Native to Microsoft SQL Server 2005.

We have recently configured Domain, Exchange, Database and File Server.

Because of the deployment of these changes we are able to maintain a secure and reliable networked environment; it has made the availability of infrastructure for the exchange, dissemination and storage of information and data between staff and the outside world & securing it from outside hacking, viruses, system crash or destruction.

Now we are able to ensure that the information is easily and immediately accessible within the network and restricted to authorized users when confidential.

Servers help in Centralized data storage and User Controlling. Data and process tracking is easier and foolproof.

We have invested Rs 200 lakhs approximately in various software & IT infrastructure.

Because of all these the company is able to achieve better Customer Exultation which is the aim all are working for. And also Decision making and managing has become proficient for both Upper and Lower management.

What are your future growth plans?

We plan to take the CRM and HR module of ERP in the coming times, though in the immediate future we plan to strengthen our existing systems.

What % of your turnover is spent on IT infrastructure?

We spend about 1% of our turnover in upgradation and maintenance.